By Ben Jealous
Bitcoin is back in the headlines again. As always, the story is volatility. Prices fall. Prices rise. Critics cheer. Believers celebrate. The cycle repeats.
But the headlines miss the deeper story.
I learned to respect Bitcoin not from traders or tech executives. I learned from dissidents and from people who lived through economic collapse. For them, Bitcoin was not about getting rich. It was about staying free.
Across the world, people facing repression or broken economies have learned the same lesson. When institutions fail, the ability to hold value outside the reach of rulers can mean the difference between fear and agency.
For many, this is daily life. Governments freeze bank accounts to punish journalists. Activists lose access to wages. Savings disappear under inflation. In those places, economic freedom and personal freedom are the same thing.
Look at Venezuela. At the height of its collapse, inflation soared toward one million percent. Teachers were paid in bills worth less than bus fare. Millions fled. Those who stayed survived with dollars, remittances and, increasingly, Bitcoin. The state could not inflate it away or block it with a phone call.
In neighboring Colombia, artists began weaving worthless Venezuelan banknotes into bags and purses. Money that once held savings became craft material. It was worth more as fabric than as currency. That image stays with me.
Look at Nigeria. A government cash redesign left families without money. Activists saw accounts restricted. Many turned to Bitcoin simply to keep life moving — paying school fees, receiving money from relatives abroad, keeping businesses alive. Not out of fashion. Out of necessity.
A former graduate student of mine, Jacqueline Escobar from Peru, wrote to me about why she believes in Bitcoin. She grew up during hyperinflation. As a child, she played with paper money that had suddenly become worthless. “I played with money that no longer had value,” she told me. “That’s when you learn that systems can fail.” Her father lost his business. Her family lost their home.
The experience shaped her path. She became a fintech lawyer, drawn to how financial systems can expand — or deny — human freedom. For her, Bitcoin became a lifeline. It offered a road back toward middle-class stability and a steadier alternative to a system people no longer trusted.
This past fall, at the Black Blockchain Summit at Howard University, activists from the African continent reminded me that refugees face the same reality. In conversations there, people told me that crossing a border often means losing access to banks, documents and savings overnight — and that Bitcoin can travel when everything else is confiscated or left behind.
Years ago, dissidents living inside a wealthy Asian nation known for severe repression told me how the state could erase people economically before ever touching them physically. Control the money and you control the person.
Bitcoin matters because it is different from the carnival of other digital coins. It has no company. No CEO. No marketing department. Its supply is fixed. Its rules are public. It is recognized around the world the way gold is recognized — by habit and trust, not by decree.
I do not confuse Bitcoin with the broader digital-coin marketplace. Stablecoins tied to the dollar have practical uses for remittances and payments. But many alternative coins look like casinos dressed as technology. Bitcoin stands apart because it answers one narrow question well: how can ordinary people store value beyond the reach of rulers?
There are real concerns. Bitcoin uses significant energy, and that energy increasingly needs to come from renewables if the technology is to align with climate goals. Those debates matter. None erase the core fact that the network itself belongs to no government and no bank.
Critics say Bitcoin is volatile. They are right. So are currencies run by politicians. Critics say criminals use it. Criminals also use dollars and shell companies and a banking system that launders far more dirty money every year than Bitcoin ever has. The question is not whether a tool can be abused. The question is who controls it.
I pray we never need such tools here. I want my children to trust courts more than code. But history humbles proud nations. Emergency powers sold as temporary have a habit of staying.
Whenever I listen to people who escaped repression, they speak of Bitcoin the way earlier generations spoke of safe houses — as the difference between begging and choosing.
Markets will rise and fall. Human beings will still need freedom.
That is why I believe the world will always need Bitcoin.
Ben Jealous is a professor of practice at the University of Pennsylvania and former national president and CEO of the NAACP. He also served as the founding director of Amnesty International USA’s domestic human rights program.
